By mid-July the garden is lush and full and pollinators are numerous. For this month's Garden Blogger's Bloom Day, I am sharing our pocket meadows.
Our first pocket meadows was installed seven years ago to revive an area that had poor compacted soil at the northeast corner of our property. We selected a seed mix with perennials that would put nutrients back into the soil and included summer and fall blooming plants to support a wide variety of pollinators. With the success of this meadow we added another along our back drive so that we could enjoy watching all the pollinators from our living room window.
Both pocket meadows includes seasonal grasses and bold perennial wildflowers that are classic meadow plants. This is what is blooming in July.
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Purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea)
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Echinacea purpurea (front) with
Chamaecrista fasciculata (back) |
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| Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata) |
a bumble bee favorite |
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| Gray-headed coneflowers (Ratibida pinnata) |
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bees love coneflowers
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Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa)
| a favorite of hummingbirds, butterflies and bees |
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| bumble bee and silvery spotted skipper sharing a bloom |
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check out the shiny hiney of this carpenter bee
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Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
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| Black eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) |
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silvery checkerspot butterfly
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leafcutter bee loaded with pollen
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Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) host plant for Monarch butterflies and Milkweed Tussock Moth
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bumblebee and silvery checkerspot butterflies
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also a bee favorite.
One of the beauties of pocket meadows is that they are pretty low maintenance. This is especially welcome during the summer months when the heat and humidity are raging. The plants in our meadow are drought tolerant and deer resistant and support many pollinators and beneficial insects.
Looking for more garden inspiration? Visit May Dreams Gardens to see what is blooming in gardens across the world.
I love your pocket meadows. I'm working to rehab my upper pasture back into its meadow state. It's going to take awhile, but I'm determined. Happy Bloom Day Karin!~~Dee
ReplyDeleteYou have a great property for a meadow and your bees will love it!
DeleteNice work! And, nice photos too. I would have a hard time getting anything else done with all that bustling activity going on around me. Happy Bloom Day!
ReplyDeleteThanks! It is fun to just sit and watch all the activity. Often a nice distraction from pulling weeds.
DeleteWhat a nice idea, pocket meadows. I have loads of pollinators, but not many of the butterfly variety. I have yet to figure it out, I plant plenty for them.
ReplyDeletePollinator plants are obviously important for the adults but key to keeping pollinators in your garden is to plant host plants for the larval stage. It also takes patience. Some years butterfly populations are just better than others.
DeleteI love meadow spaces and yours are beautiful, and clearly also full of life! I covet Monarda but thus far have only managed to get one hybrid variety to survive in my climate. I'm hoping to introduce more Rudbeckia here, although prior experience suggests that it'll be short-lived.
ReplyDeleteMonarda does really well in our Georgia clay soil. As they say it's all in the soil. I hope you find a way to grow Monarda and Rudbeckia so you can enjoy them. They are summer staples for me.
DeleteI miss my butterfly weed blooms ..Its lovely to see bees and butterflies hovering upon the flowers.
ReplyDeleteYes, love all the activity! I always feel the need to have a pollinator on a flower to photograph. Otherwise it just seems to be missing something.
DeleteA pocket meadow is such a great idea! I want to convert most of our hilltop (other than the raised bed section) into a naturalized area - you've just given me a light bulb moment! Did you have to deal with getting rid of invasives before you got started? A good chunk of the "natural" area on the hilltop is currently teaming with buckthorn, wild grape and hawkweed (and I'm sure bindweed is under all this, just for good measure,lol).
ReplyDeleteWe didn't have any invasive plants in the area where we planted the pocket meadows however, we have LOTS of experience removing invasive plants such as kudzu, Japanese honeysuckle, privet, Japanese silt grass to name a few. We've hand removed most of it, covered the area with newspaper/cardboard and thick mulch to suppress the weeds. It took us a whole year to remove all the weeds (winter & summer).
DeleteBeautiful! We have some of the same flowers, but I love your variety of butterflies, especially the silvery checkerspot.
ReplyDelete